


Life and Wishes

by Lakritzwolf



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies)
Genre: Fili is a genie in a bottle, Legolas - mentioned - Freeform, M/M, Thorin - mentioned - Freeform, fili and kili are not related, modern day AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-13
Updated: 2015-04-13
Packaged: 2018-03-22 16:51:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 15,836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3736420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lakritzwolf/pseuds/Lakritzwolf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kili's life is boring and lonely. Until the day he buys a teapot on a flea market - and suddenly, he has a genie in his life who is there to fulfil his every wish. Sounds great, doesn't it? Only... it isn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _This story is a little special to me, I wrote it years ago and it was sitting on my computer disregarded and gathering dust as I didn't really like it... and then I suddenly got the idea to turn it into a FiKi fic and suddenly it worked._

It had been one of those days at work... the days Killian hated the most. It started with a hectic run for the bus, a dash up into the office because the city had been, as usual, jammed with traffic, and a boss who had, like him, gotten up with the wrong leg. 

What a fuckup day! He was drooping with tiredness when he finally reached the door to the sanctuary that he called his flat, fumbling with the keys to unlock the door.  
Thank god it was Friday!

He didn’t bother with much of a dinner that night and took his usual place in front of the TV with his plate full of sandwiches. Zipping through various versions of the same shit, he briefly wondered when he last had bothered with making a dinner and sitting down at the table to eat it. It must have been shortly before Thorin and he had split up.

Staring at the screen where a smiling woman told him about the advantages of one very special dishwasher liquid, he realised that it had been more than four months now since Thorin had moved out. He still quite liked to tell himself he didn’t miss him, the old fart. But he did. Well, probably not really, more the company he had kept him. Kili do not like being alone, but falling asleep on the sofa almost every night had been among the more exciting things that had happened in the last year of their relationship.

If he was honest with himself, which he seldom was, he might admit that he should have realised the end of their relationship last spring. But he hadn’t. Things you do not want to see are not there until you no longer can ignore them. Well, it was over now, Thorin was gone, and that was that. It was not as if he had cried a lot. He just was bored out of his wits sometimes with no one to talk to. 

Frustrated as well as tired, he dropped his empty plate onto the table and went to bed in the hope of feeling better after a good night’s sleep.  
He felt better, somewhat, but weekend mornings were worse than weekday mornings, for the same reason as evenings. He had time then, time to make himself a nice breakfast with some serious coffee, but why bother when there is no one but you? 

Saturday and Sunday mornings just made him aware at how lonely I had become. Being with Thorin had been all he wanted for so long that he had neglected other friendships, and after so long a time with only Thorin most of them had probably given up anyway.  
Staring out of the window, holding on to his cup of coffee, he didn’t realise at first that the phone was ringing.  
Who on earth would ring him on a Saturday morning at ten o’clock? 

“Hi Kili, it’s Tauriel here!”  
“Tauriel!” He was more than a little surprised. Tauriel had been one of his best friends, before he had started going out with Thorin, and she had been the last to give up on him. Her phoning him up so unexpectedly gave rise to hopes he would eventually be able to re-establish a circle of friends and a social life again. “God, it has been ages! I’m impressed you remember my number.”  
“Well, so am I.” But she laughed, and he realised how much he had missed her. “Kili, I’ll put it bluntly. Leggy and I went out yesterday to watch a movie and we saw Thorin there with another guy I didn’t know. How long ago have you split up?”

Another guy? Kili was a little surprised at how little he cared. “A bit more than four months.”  
“Wow. And may I ask as to what you have been doing with yourself in that time?”  
“Nothing much.” And how pathetic that sounded! But it was just the truth.  
“Nothing much. Doesn’t sound like the Kili I used to know.” She sounded not really angry, more exasperated. He didn’t blame her. They had, in their younger years (that is, before he met Thorin, a man twelve years his senior), done quite a lot of silly and funny stuff, went out every weekend on hikes, just the two of us with their backpacks. Then Thorin had come along, and he had, strangely, aged by twenty years, or something like that. 

It was not that Kili hadn’t loved him, quite the contrary. It was just that being with him seemed to have altered his personality. And maybe, maybe Tauriel was the one who could help him find a little of that young, silly man again.  
“Well, you know.” Kili tried to think of something to say, but she forestalled him.  
“Yeah, I know. Everyone did. To be honest, I never understood what you found in Thorin, at least not after the first six months. Have you been arguing a lot?”

Kili flopped down on the sofa. “No, not really arguing. The problem is we had, more or less, stopped talking with each other altogether.”  
“You sound very tired when you say that, love.”  
“I am tired. Though I don’t know why. I lack a little energy these days.”  
“Course you do,” Tauriel said in her usual straight-in-the-face way. “You need another man.”  
“Thanks, I am quite content as it is right now.”  
“Whatever.” It sounded like she was grinning. “Listen. Fancy coming over to my place for a bite to eat? It’ll be lunchtime when you’re here, anyway. How about it?”

Kili was about to say he couldn’t really be bothered, thinking about a nice way to put it, when something nudged him in the back of his head. He was only twenty-seven, and just because he had split up, it wouldn’t mean he should, or even would, spend the rest of his life sitting on a sofa. Maybe he did not need a man, as such, but what he definitely needed was some company.

“I’d love to, Tauriel. Thanks ever so much!”  
“Ah, don’t mention it. Listen. Take the 57, get off at Alexander Street, and walk down the road until you reach the corner Alexander Street and Lower Lane. There’s a big red house in front of you, I live on the third floor, right flat. Got it?”  
“I think so. See you in a bit, Tauriel!”  
“See ya!”

Kili hung up, feeling strangely excited. Well, it seemed that not the whole world had forgotten about him. And maybe, he thought as he dressed, he could revive the friendship with Tauriel more easily than he’d have guessed. She seemed easy-going enough to him.  
They had met, every now and then, in the mall or in a cafe or suchlike, had had a little small-talk, but never more. Still, she seemingly had not given up on him. 

As he made his way to the bus stop he remembered her love for sweet things and bought some chocolates. Equipped with these along with a strangely lightened mood, boarded the bus and was so lost in staring out of the window that he almost forgot to get out at Alexander Street. The 57 was the line he used to get to work, and he almost had done what he did every weekday, sitting in the bus, staring out of the window, and getting off in the industrial estate to labour himself into his office in the Campbell Software Building where he worked in IT, dealing with the mess of other people too stupid to read what was on their screen before they clicked on Yes.

But not today! As he hopped off the bus, he felt so brilliant that he knew he should have given Tauriel a call months ago. In fact, he realised with more than a little guilt, he should never have let her down that way. But she seemed to have forgiven him, and he on his part would gladly make any apologies it took.  
It needed none, as it turned out. Tauriel embraced him heartily and warmly as after she opened the door, then she ushered him in and made him take off his shoes. Looking around in the neat little flat, he realised a little relieved that she seemed to live alone. Kili had met Legolas, but he couldn’t say he knew him, and he would have felt a little awkward had he been there as well.

“Chocolate! Nasty bitch!” She laughed with these words, a thing that only she could ever do to Kili, being insulting without actually insulting him. “I finally managed to lose a stone or two, and you come with chocolate.” She grinned, popped on into her mouth and winked, and Kili felt instantly at home with her, again.  
”You know Tauriel, I missed you. I don’t know what...”  
“Oh, do stop,” she said, suddenly serious again. “I know that lovers can do strange things to a man’s mind, and while I did like Thorin, more or less, I couldn’t imagine what you found in him that made you stay.”

”Oh, I really couldn’t say, now.” Kili shrugged, feeling slightly embarrassed. “I thought, at times, that he would be the best thing that could happen to me, in a way.”  
“Yea, the good provider theory and all that.” Tauriel tilted her head and Kili had to grin.  
”Maybe. He could be very smart and charming, though.”  
”Oh, I know. But most times he was as charming and smart as an old pancake.”  
“Pancake?” Kili stared at her, and she shrugged with a mischievous grin.  
“That’s what I used to call him. I know he had this marvellous bank job and earned shitloads of money, but Kili, for god’s sake! You told me that your sex life wasn’t very exciting.”

”Oh, well. I admit, it didn’t get better.” It hadn’t. And while it was absolutely right that Thorin could be charming and smart, it was absolutely true that he had the imagination and initiative of aforementioned yesterday’s pancake. Why had it taken him so longed to realise that he wasn’t at all satisfied with this, as much as he had tried to convince himself of it? And why had he done so in the first place? It might well be that these are some of the questions in life that can never be answered.

“Well. Whatever, he’s gone now, and you should move on. Or maybe back?” She nudged Kili in the ribs, and he had to grin. Maybe back, indeed.

They had their lunch, and during the meal Tauriel brought Kili up to date with what had happened in her life in the last four years. When they had their coffee, and it was his turn, he was finished with his tale before the cups were half empty. Some life...

“Oh well, strange things happen to people.” Tauriel stirred in her cup although she always had her coffee black. It had always puzzled Kili, and now he finally managed to ask.  
Tauriel looked up and laughed. “Oh god, most times I don’t even realize I do this!” She said and grinned. “I used to have sugar in my coffee, later I got off the stuff, but I kind of never got rid of the habit of stirring.”

“Oh well, talking about strange things and all that,” Kili said as he watched her put the spoon aside. Inwardly, he cursed himself for not having called her sooner, but then he became determined to not letting it him bring down again. Here he was, back in life, and whatever he had lost would never come back, anyway. Better look forward and see what life had still in store for him. Maybe Tauriel was right, and he really needed another man.

“Know what?” Tauriel leaned forward. “There’s a flea market today, just down the road on the little plaza behind the supermarket. Fancy going there?”  
“Flea market? Sounds great!” It had been ages since Kili had been on one of those. One of the things Thorin didn’t like was looking at other people’s old rubbish, something Kili had always enjoyed; and being with Thorin, he had never been to any of those any more. 

Whereas in times before, Tauriel and Kili used to go to every single one they could spot, buying lots of old knick-knack, laughing their heads off at home about the things and throwing them away a couple of weeks later. Sometimes not, and the stuff kept collecting, until finally, they struck up a table on the next fair and got rid of their collection again. A self sustaining circle, really.

So it was that an hour later they set off, backpacks firmly shouldered, and made their way down the road towards the smell of candyfloss and dusty old carpets.  
Just out of sheer defiance to the dullness his life had become Kili bought a bright red seventies plastic lamp and a singing alarm clock. Out of interest he bought a couple of used CDs just because the cover looked interesting or the title of the cover did, or the name of the band.

”What on earth is a band with the name of Grazing Daffodils supposed to play?” Tauriel asked him, and he shrugged. The cover featured the picture of a cow, taken with a fisheye lens.  
“I don’t know, but the third song is actually named: Dump me, kick me, shit on me.”  
“Sounds promising.” Tauriel herself had bought some necklaces, probably someone’s granny’s, and a little bobble-head dog. 

Laden with their treasures, they sauntered along the rows of stalls and tables, admiring the creativity of porcelain makers of old as well as the imagination of modern Chinese producers of plastic toys. It was the very last stall they passed that actually sold some really antique stuff, and it caught his eye because it had some very tasteful silver goblets on display.

The goblets were, as it turned out, Victorian and far too rich for his blood, but what then caught his attention was a little oil lamp, almost hidden behind a large porcelain pitcher.  
It was rather nondescript, some metallic alloy that Kili could not identify but had to contain copper since it was covered in a greenish patina. It looked like a small, slightly flattened teapot but was surprisingly heavy. It seemed to be very solidly cast metal, so it was unlikely to break if dropped. The perfect item for him.

”How much?” Kili asked, and the man shrugged.  
“Say five pound, the lid is stuck.”  
“Four?”  
“Four fifty.”  
“Done then.”

So Kili bought the little lamp for four pound fifty pence and put it in his pack. Carrying his ugly red lamp like a trophy of war, he made his way back to the bus station, accompanied by Tauriel and her acquisition of necklaces, the bobble head dog and a colourful knitted scarf.  
“Fancy coming along to my place for dinner?” He asked, and Tauriel grinned and nodded. 

They improvised a dinner at Kili’s place since he hadn’t been shopping for the whole week, but he still had a bottle of wine, kept for a special occasion. This was it, he decided, and they drank the whole bottle between the two of them before Tauriel made her way home again with the promise to pick him up the next day for a walk in the park.

As Kili closed the door behind her he felt so happy and in such a light mood like he hadn’t felt in years, and he could only shake his head as to why he had let his life become such a boring mess.  
Whatever, he seemed to be on the track of improving it. Listening to the very strange tunes of the Grazing Daffodils, he placed the red lamp on the little table next to the docking station of his phone and the singing alarm clock on his nightstand. 

Then he remembered the oil lamp and that the vendor had said the lid was stuck, so he took it out of his backpack and sat down on the sofa to have a look at it. The lid was stuck indeed; it almost seemed welded in place and he only managed to break the knife he had employed as a tool to pry it open.

“Hm.” Kili stared at the lamp, weighing it in his hands and wondering if he could use it as a lamp at all. He would have to buy lamp oil and a wick, and it would probably produce more smoke than light, anyway. But he quite liked the look of it, and it would fit nicely in the bedroom on the mantelpiece of the long closed up fireplace. On his way to the bedroom he grabbed a dirty tea towel to give the lamp a wipe to remove the dust. It had an uneven surface, there was some kind of pattern engraved in it, so he would have to give it a wash to remove all the dirt. 

Absentmindedly Kili rubbed his cloth over the surface of the lamp as he entered the bedroom, wondering where the slight hissing sound came from. Was the window open?  
He put the lamp on the mantelpiece to check the windows, but they were all closed. The hissing had stopped now, and he shrugged. Hopefully, it would not be a gas leak. He turned around to leave the bedroom and almost had a heart attack. He was too stunned even to scream.

There was a man in his bedroom, a complete stranger. That alone was bad enough, although, he had to admit after a second of recovery, he looked quite handsome. But what made him feel slightly sick was the fact that he hovered in the air instead of standing on the carpet. He was, in fact, hovering beside the lamp. 

Kili stared, and he didn’t move. What on earth had been wrong with that wine? Or was it that he had finally lost his mind? It must be a serious mental problem that made me imagine a genie in his bedroom. A genie? In a lamp? In **his** fucking bedroom? In **his** fucking head? Trembling with fury at the cretinism of his own mind, he made a step towards the door.

“I will go now,” he said much more calmly than I felt. “I will go, have a shower, and by the time I will come back, you are gone. Tauriel has talked too much about new men today and I have a sexual deficiency by now. And I had too much wine. When I come back to go to bed, you are gone. **Understand**?!”

The apparition nodded, but otherwise didn’t move. Slightly shaken Kili left and stumbled into the bathroom. Whatever was wrong with him, he seemed to very suddenly need professional help. But whatever it was, when he came back into the bedroom, the apparition was gone indeed. Kili felt seriously relieved, but still had to put the lamp into the cupboard in the kitchen before he went to bed.  
Needless to say, he didn’t sleep that night. Not a single hour.


	2. Chapter 2

When Tauriel stood before his door the next morning, she was instantly aware that something was wrong, but Kili couldn’t bring himself to tell her what had happened, or what he believed had happened. But the half truth of him being unable to sleep because he had been brooding too much was not too heavy his conscience, and Tauriel talked him round into going for a walk with her anyway. 

Walking through the park, with the buds opening on the trees and shrubs, birds chirping and litter drifting in the wind, his memory of last night seemed so weird that he had to tell someone, and Tauriel was the only one available. When he had finished, she gave him a mystified look and shook her head. 

“You definitely need a man, Kili. Definitely, and as soon as possible.”  
“I’ve really imagined it, haven’t I?” Kili said, feebly trying to smile.   
Tauriel snorted and stared at him. “You’re not fucking Aladdin, you know.”  
“Of course not!” But he really had seen the thing, hadn’t he? At least to his very own mind, it had been there for a moment. “But Tauriel, do you think I should seek out help?”

“For imagining a supernatural being coming out of a piece of rubbish in your bedroom? Only if he does it again, I’d say.”  
“Very funny.”  
”I was being serious.” She shrugged and put a hand on his arm. “Listen. Sometimes, a mind can produce weird things if seriously occupied, and half a bottle of wine doesn’t help. If you see that thing again, I’d say see some mental guru or a shrink or something. But once, really, I’d blame it on all the stress.”

It relieved Kili seriously to hear her talk so matter-of-factly about this. They talked about other things then, and made their farewells at the bus stop later on. 

In a feeble attempt of bravery Kili took the lamp out of the cupboard and placed it on the mantelpiece again, pretending nothing had ever happened. He slept, but probably just because he hadn’t slept at all the night before. The lamp was still giving him the creeps.

The usual Monday morning routine hit him full in the face the next day, and he decided first thing in the morning that a singing alarm clock was only funny as long as it didn’t actually wake you up.   
The week in the office started as awful as the last one ended, network troubles turned the whole day into a series of programme crashes and data loss, and Kili was more than glad when the clock struck five and he could go home. He had not forgotten about the lamp, but he couldn’t be bothered, and tried to ignore the nagging memory of it sitting in his bedroom for the whole of the day, with meagre success.

Tired and strained, feeling already the need for his next weekend, Kili made his way home.   
Home, to where the darn lamp was innocently standing on the mantelpiece. In retrospective, he realised that the man he had imagined really was handsome, and as he got off the bus, a thought so crazy hit his mind that he didn’t even dare to think it through to the end.   
But being in the safety of his own walls, he did think it through. Things like these happen in fairytales, he told himself. A genie is there to fulfil wishes, so why shouldn’t he take advantage of it if he really came across one?   
Feeling incredibly silly and incredibly nervous and not a little frightened at the same time, Kili took the lamp, equipped with a tea towel because he remembered the tale of Aladdin, and gave it a cautious rub.

Nothing happened, but as he was about to release his breath in relief that it really had all been just his imagination, he heard the slight hissing again. He almost dropped the lamp, but managed, barely, to put it onto the mantelpiece and step back.  
Kili forced himself not to bolt, because he had made himself try this out, hadn’t he? For fuck’s sake, he thought, this impossible!

But there he was, that man, hovering over the lamp, watching him curiously but without making any sound. _Right_ , Kili thought. _If you are imagination, you do what I want, because you come out of my head. If you aren’t, if you are a real genie, then you do what I want. It’s a win-win-situation, really_. But he didn’t feel as brave as his thoughts tried to be.

His hair was the colour of honey and gold. It was not very long, just reaching his shoulders, and thick and slightly shaggy. He had a beard of the same colour as his hair and a braided moustache that ended in silver beads. His earlobes were pierced as well as his nose, the ring running right through it, like an ox would have. He hadn’t the figure of a body builder, as you would imagine such a being to have. He was well muscled, but all in all, looked fairly normal. He was wearing a strange, baggy sort of trousers and no shirt, and had a golden bracer on each wrist. 

And that was where the normality ended. Apart from the pierced nose that made him look like a fierce animal only tamed by pain, his eyes were not humanlike at all. They were black, not lifeless, but just black. As if he had only pupils and no iris at all. They seemed a little insect-like, and Kili had to admit he had a seriously dry throat as he discovered that. But then, other than the eyes, he looked like a normal, well-proportioned human man.

_Right_ , he thought. _All the details taken in_. But he could not do any more than that, he was unable to speak. His stomach was still tightly knotted, and he realised that he was sweating. But still, the creature had not moved, and Kili forced himself to act.   
”Hi.” _Oh god, that is certainly the first thing you should say to a supernatural apparition appearing in your bedroom_ , he thought. _Tea? Sugar? Pull yourself together!_

“Erm.” Not better, really.   
The apparition tilted his head as if in puzzlement, and Kili swallowed and tried again.   
“You’re a genie.” Now that wouldn’t qualify him for the Nobel prize, either.  
“I am indeed,” he answered, raising one eyebrow.   
“Do you fulfil wishes?” Kili blurted out, but the genie didn’t move a muscle.   
“I do, master,” he said, and Kili goggled. No one had ever called him that. He realised at the same moment that he unconsciously had tugged his t-shirt into place and had swept his hair back.   
“Right...” Kili muttered, completely at a loss. How do you small talk with someone who is either a supernatural being at your disposal or a product of your own mental instability?  
“God, I need a drink,” he said then, and the genie nodded and handed him a glass out of nowhere.   
Kili took it, his hands shivering so badly that he almost spilled the liquid, but some of it actually reached his lips. Single malt. Well. He **was** a genie... 

Kili took a sip and watched him over the rim of his glass when he suddenly realised that the fact that he **had** a glass in his hand meant that whatever it was that had come out of the lamp was real.

He slumped down on the bed with that realisation, feeling completely knocked off his feet. He had a genie... a real genie! He would fulfil his wishes!   
And he would probably awake in a couple of days with a nice straightjacket around his shoulders and nice people talking calmly to him and giving him colourful little things to eat...

But until then... His life had been so miserable and boring the last few years, wasn’t it about time he got something back? This thought made him feel more determined to make use of his opportunity.

“What kind of wishes do you fulfil?” Kili asked and the genie spread out his hand.   
“Almost everything,” he said. “I cannot go back nor forward in time, though.”  
“Fuck. Knowing next week’s football outcomes would make a fortune,” Kili said, watching him blink in confusion. He didn’t seem to know what football was.

“Anyway,” Kili said, looking at his empty glass. “Could we start with another one of those?”  
The genie nodded and moved his right hand, and the glass was full again. It was eerie, but at the same time, Kili began to feel reckless. He took a healthy sip of his Islay malt and watched the genie watching him. 

“If I wish for some item...” he asked him after a while, a sudden thought brushing his mind, “...would it always have been there, or would I be in trouble explaining to people where that had come from?”

The genie shrugged. “I think it would depend on the size of the item,” he said. “It is when you would wish for a palace that people would maybe start asking awkward questions.”  
Feeling himself stagger at the brink of hysteria, Kili giggled and emptied his glass, feeling the heat of the whisky spread through his belly. 

“I don’t want a palace. I would need the staff to keep the place clean. Can I have another one?”   
And again, his glass filled itself. He took another sip and stared at the genie again. There to serve him and call him master.   
“Can you bring me a man?” Kili asked, but the genie shook his head.   
“That lies not within his power.”

“Bugger,” Kili replied absentmindedly. Really, with enough whisky, he could get used to the idea of having a genie. All the possibilities...  
“Can you clean up his place?”  
“That certainly lies within his power.”  
“Would you mind?”  
“Your wish is my command, master.”

“Well,” Kili said, feeling flattered. But suddenly, there was another thought. Being called master had triggered memories of things he had been taught, something that he as a member of a western society, should well be aware of.   
“Eh... would you mind not calling me master?” 

But as the genie lifted his eyebrows, Kili realised that it would make no difference. He would do whatever he asked of him, and that would make him a slaver. Wouldn’t it? He was no slave, in the actual sense of the word, alone through the fact that he wasn’t human. But still...

“Call me Kili, please,” Kili said, trying to ease his conscience with the fact that he really was no human being.   
The genie nodded. “As you wish, Kili.”  
“Say, do you have a name? I wouldn’t like calling you genie all the time.”

For a second, the genie closed his eyes and furrowed his brow. But as soon as he opened his eyes again, his face was as impassive as before. Kili wasn’t sure if he had imagined it, but he might have looked distressed for a second. 

“I do not have a name, Kili.”  
“Oh, I see. Eh...” Kili emptied his glass. “Would you want one?”  
“I do not have a will, Kili. I am a genie.”  
“Isn’t that a little frustrating at times?”

“I do not know frustration,” he said, and at that moment Kili was sure he lied. His face had betrayed him, he was pretty sure of it. And that made him, in turn, feel even worse. And here he was, having a genie at his disposal and being too afraid to use it. He thought about it a while, and had an idea.

“If I would like you to have a name, could you have one?”  
“You can call me whatever you like, Kili.”  
Kili thought about this a little more, and thought he might as well try. “What if I say I would like to call you whatever you like, would that work?”

The genie blinked. He didn’t answer at once, he blinked, and then he blinked again. In a computer, the equivalent of that face would have produced a blue screen along with the lines of press any key to continue. Kili did press a key, in the hopes of not producing a crash.

“I wish for you to choose a name for you, genie.”

He blinked again. He blurred. Kili was pretty sure of it; he looked like a picture in Photoshop with atmospheric disturbances mugging up the image, if only for a second. But then he took a deep breath and crossed his arms. “You can call me Filean.”

“Filean. What does that mean?”  
“It is a name, Kili. Do you have any more wishes?”  
Kili felt a little strained by now, and had had enough whisky, as well. He shook his head, and the genie was gone. He couldn’t help the feeling that he had seriously upset him and made a note to apologize to him the next time.

When the next time was he couldn’t say as he went to bed. He felt a little weird and more than a little drunk, but the last night without sleep took its toll and Kili slept. 

It was, in fact, not before the next Saturday. In the routine of his office days, the fact that he had a genie sitting on his mantelpiece became so absurd that Kili didn’t have the nerve to actually consciously think of him again, but he distinctly remembered his face showing randomly up in his dreams. 

It looked very sad, that face. Kili found himself brooding over this fact as he lay in his bed Saturday morning, enjoying the fact he didn’t had to get up. Now, he thought, he could call his genie and tell him to make coffee. Or he could get up, make his coffee himself, and have a better conscience. 

Conscience won. Kili crawled back into bed with his coffee, but felt the lack of companionship. He realised it the same moment and thought it weird that his first thought was to summon his genie for company. And since when had he started to think of him as his genie? Probably at some point in the night as he had dreamed about him.

“You have called for me?”  
Kili almost dropped his coffee, but caught it just in time. “I... I thought I had to rub the lamp...”  
“Not necessarily. Rubbing the lamp is a focus that is not needed any more once a link between the master and the genie is established.”  
“Er....right.” He was still giving Kili the creeps, and he didn’t blame himself. But maybe there was something...

“Would you mind...” Kili began, watching the genie watching him impassively. He tried to smile friendly. “Would you mind not hovering above the lamp, please? Could you, maybe, just stand on the ground, like?”  
“As you wish,” he said, and lowered himself down onto the carpet.  
”Thank you,” Kili replied, more automatically, but he saw that this puzzled him. Probably no one had ever been polite to him. “Do you drink coffee?” He asked, and the genie tilted his head.  
“I do not take any physical sustenance, Kili,” he said. And then he added in a voice that sounded a little weird: “Thank you nonetheless.” 

That made Kili absolutely determined to be polite to him. No one had obviously ever been. A little kindness had never hurt anyone, he thought, and just because he wasn’t human (his mind still shied somewhat away from that thought, although not so violently as in the beginning) as was clearly seen when he looked into his strange, black eyes, did not mean he could not be friendly. 

Sitting in his bed, a mug of coffee in his hands, the sunlight of early spring filtering through the window, Kili could watch that being standing at the foot of his bed and almost think he was human, a friend coming to visit. 

“Say, Filean, could you create a coffee for you, or the illusion of it, and drink it with me?”  
Filean blinked again, and tilted his head. “I can,” he said, and had a mug, like Kili’s, in his hands the same time. 

“Just for the sake of companionship,” Kili said and tried a smile. The genie didn’t smile, but he drank his illusionary coffee with Kili in silence and he really did not feel so alone any more although they did not speak at all until Kili had to get up to go to the loo. When he came back, Filean had vanished, and Kili did not summon him again. He probably felt, in his own way, as weird as Kili did. 

Kili stared at the lamp sitting on the mantelpiece for a while and tried to forget the weird look the genie had given him when he had wished for him to choose a name.

It was hard to tell, but he was absolutely convinced that he had looked weirdly at him. It was, obviously, hard to tell with these strange eyes. Trying to shed these thoughts, Kili got up and had a shower, then had some toast and called up Tauriel. She wasn’t at home, and her answering machine told him that she and Legolas had spontaneously decided to make a trip to Aberdeen for the weekend to visit Legolas’s family.

So much for his weekend then.


	3. Chapter 3

Faced with the choice of hanging around in his flat and watch television for two days, Kili suddenly felt the urge to escape his confinement. He put on his coat and was out of the door before he had even thought about where he would be going. He started with strolling around the mall for a while, drinking a coffee in a little cafe, watching people stream past him.

He aimlessly browsed through a few shops afterwards, but nothing was there that interested him. What did interest him, eventually, was a nice, dark blue shirt, but as he tried it on, it fitted not half as nicely as it fitted the ugly plastic doll in the window. That thing had less hips and much more abs; Kili would need to spend a fortune on a seamstress to make it fit, so he hung it back.

But the moment he was about to leave the shop, he remembered the fact that he did not need a seamstress. He could simply ask his genie to make it fit, couldn’t he?   
Elated, Kili went back inside and bought the shirt. 

When he came home, another surprise awaited him. The genie, obviously having remembered their first talk, had tidied his flat. It was sparkling clean, dusted, vacuumed, the dishes were done and the curtains washed. Kili was impressed, and again, his conscience pricked him in the small of his back.

Kili dropped his bag and hung up his coat. “Genie? Filean?”  
Even expecting him, it made Kili jump as his voice was suddenly behind me. “Kili?”  
”Oh, hi.” He tried to calm down again and told himself to better get used to this. “Thanks for cleaning up.” 

There it was again. He blinked. “You are most welcome,” he said, and Kili thought it sounded a little hesitant. Maybe he had never been treated politely and as such, had never bothered being polite. Kili wouldn’t have blamed him if this was the case.  
“I bought a shirt,” Kili said, picking up the bag, suddenly feeling slightly embarrassed to consult him regarding his wardrobe. “It doesn’t fit all too well, but I thought you could maybe make it fit?”

“I can do that, Kili,” he said, and Kili realised that he said his name like he would have said master. Not that Kili blamed him; it was probably the way he was. Still, he realized then that thinking about all the things was one thing, actually looking at him and asking him to do it quite another. He was just too nice, he suspected. He could imagine lots of people who wouldn’t have had any scruples abusing a situation like this.

Musing over these thoughts, Kili went into the bedroom to put on the shirt. The genie was still standing where he had left him, and had not moved a muscle, as it seemed. At that moment Kili began to wonder if there was maybe something he could do for him, in return.

Filean looked him over, and as he moved a hand, Kili felt the cloth of the shirt moving over his skin as if he was standing in a strong wind. It felt a little strange, but then the genie nodded and pointed towards the mirror. Kili turned, and was impressed. It fitted nicely, without any folds or tight spots, and he smiled at him as he faced the genie again.

”Nice work. Thanks ever so much.”  
“You are most welcome,” he said again, dispassionately as usual.   
Kili sighed and dropped his arms. “Filean,” he said, and noticed again that he blinked. “I know that you’re a genie, and that you’re doing your job, so to say, but can I do something for you in return?”

He wavered. It was unsettling, but he actually wavered like a holographic image would if the signal was disturbed (Kili hadseen such a thing happening in Star Trek now and then). It lasted for a few seconds, then he trembled ever so slightly and stared at Kili again. 

And Kili nearly choked. Whatever he had done to him with his question, his eyes had changed. They were no longer black and metallic; they had an iris around the pupil. The iris was dark grey, almost black itself, and hardly distinguishable from the pupil. His eyes still had no white in them, but at that moment, he looked like a living being, not like some ghostly appearance any more. What had he done?

“I’m sorry, I seem to have upset you...” Kili began, but the genie lifted his hands.   
“Don’t be,” the genie said, and Kili noticed despite his worries that he had started to abbreviate words like he did in his casual way of talking. “But I can tell you nothing. I do not have a will of my own.” He kept on looking at Kili, as if expecting him to do something. Kili was a little confused, but then he remembered the thing about his name.

“I wish you to name what I could do for you in return,” he said, and could have sworn at that moment the genie almost smiled.   
”If you would be so kind,” he said, “As to tell me about the world and time you live in?”

”Huh.” Kili said. “That is a big thing, but I think we have the time, don’t we?”   
“More or less,” Filean gave back. “I can spend only limited time outside the lamp. At one point, I have to go back there to recover.”  
Kili mustered him and felt his brow furrow. Had he sounded anxious? “What if someone ordered you not to go?”  
“I would eventually perish,” he said, and the impassionate way he said it made Kili shudder.  
“Do tell me when you need to retire,” he said, meaning it from the bottom of his heart.   
The genie just nodded and then followed him into the kitchen.

Feeling awkward about asking him again, Kili put an apron on to protect his new shirt and made dinner, only realising as he laid out the table that he had cooked for two. He shot Filean a glance, but he did not seem to have noticed. Then he shrugged, and invited him with a gesture to take a seat. Filean sat down, and Kili did likewise, his plate full, the genie’s empty. 

”Do you want some food?” Kili asked, but he shook his head. “Let’s start off with what you know,” he said then as he started rolling the spaghetti around his fork. “When was the last time you were out of that lamp before we... er... met?”  
“I do not know,” he said. “I have no notion about time passing in the lamp.”  
“Oh.” Kili tried not to think about eternal boredom and forced his mind to think about something else. “Do you know what was important in that time? A king, or something? A war? And where were you?”

“My master’s name was Andrew Batton,” he said, and Kili could only shrug.   
”Can’t say I ever heard of someone by that name.”   
“He was a soldier, and if I understood him rightly, the lamp was a trophy of war.”  
“Where was that?”  
“On a ship.”  
“A ship?”

He barely nodded. “He was on a ship when he first gave the lamp a rub to clean it. I have never seen him again after that first time. He was very scared, a thing I can well understand. I have no idea as to where the ship was.”  
“Not a lot of help,” Kili said, and had a sip of water. “What was before that?”  
“Before that I was in the hand of a man called Omar. It was in a city called Jerusalem.”  
Kili felt something cold creep down his spine. “Jerusalem?”  
“Yes.”

Oh god, he thought, it can’t really be, can it? Jerusalem... and after that, as a trophy of war... So the last time he had been about had seemingly been... at the time of the crusades. Kili shivered at the thought. 

“And this Omar...” he said, trying to get around the thought, “...was he a kind master?”  
“He was not too unkind. But he was very greedy. His greed did, in the end, kill him. People thought he was a warlock because he could not explain his riches any more. He was stoned to death and the lamp in his cellar forgotten.”

“Until the crusaders came,” Kili whispered; the food on his plate forgotten. He really did not feel like eating any more.  
“I don’t know what crusaders are,” Filean said, and Kili swallowed.  
”Jerusalem...” he explained, “...was, and still is, for people of faith, a holy city. There were a lot of wars around this city, people of one faith trying to hold it against people of others. And the crusades happened when the Europeans went there to capture the city... more than eight hundred years ago.”

He blinked. “Eight hundred years.”  
“Give or take. I’m not well educated in that department.”  
“I assume the world has changed a bit since those times.”  
”Bet on that,” Kili said, and had to grin at the same time. Then another thought came to his mind. “Can you read? I could not possibly and correctly tell you the world’s history alone, but I can bring you lots of books, if you want.”  
“I can read,” he said, and again he was caught in the trap of his being unable to express his will.   
“I will bring you books,” Kili said, trying not to be embarrassed, but Filean just nodded.   
“I am most grateful,” he said. “But now I must return to my lamp.”

“By all means,” Kili said. “What is it that you do? Sleep? Or just....” he ran out of words. What did a genie do?   
”If I was human, you could call it sleep,” he said, not moving a muscle in his face as he stood up. He nodded and thinned out like a fading picture.  
“Good night,” Kili said, and could have sworn he blinked again before he vanished.

The next morning Kili spend in the library that luckily, happened to be open on Sundays. He scrounged as many history books as he could, ones he thought useful, covering general history, not just the history of England or Europe. He also took a couple about the development of technology from Stone Age to today, two about society throughout the ages, and one about the history and development of modern medicine. 

With two bags full of books, he made his way home again, wondering what it must be like to lose eight hundred years in a good night’s sleep. In a way, he thought, it was like time-travelling, only one way. There was no way back.   
When Kili entered his flat, he found the table laid out for two, the dirty dishes and pots from the night before were cleaned. He called for Filean, and he appeared behind him, again, and startled him, again, although Kili had been expecting him to do this.

“I’ve brought you books,” he said, and suddenly remembering the trap of last night and the night before, he added: “And I wish you to read them.”  
Filean nodded, and Kili watched his face closely as he did so. Maybe he was imagining it, but there could have been the tiniest notion of a smile around the corners of his mouth. But the rest of him was so dispassionate that he wasn’t too sure if he had really seen it.

“Do you wish me to keep you company throughout your meal, Kili?” He asked, and Kili smiled.   
“Yes please. But the books?”  
“I’ve read them,” he gave back, and this time it was Kili’s turn to blink. “The moment you wished for me to read them, I have read them,” he explained. “And I admit, the world has changed a lot.”  
“I’d guess so,” Kili replied as I sat down. 

Flean took his place opposite of him and food appeared on his plate. Spaghetti again, but that was fine by Kili, this being his favourite food.  
After the meal he sat down in front of the television and invited Filean to come along. He sat down on the sofa beside him and was, obviously, rather fascinated by the concept of television. 

Obviously, having read about it and actually seeing it was something entirely different; no book on earth about television technology will waste one word about all the rubbish you can encounter watching it on a Sunday afternoon.

They watched some cartoons, a bit of football, a silly game show, and some adverts before Filean announced he had to go back into the lamp. But he seemed rather reluctant to go, and after he was gone, Kili realised he would have liked him to stay.

He spend the rest of the afternoon in a strange mood in front of the telly, trying to figure out what was wrong. To no avail.   
When it got dark outside and he let down the blinds, he finally realised that he missed Filean’s company when he was not there.   
_Come on boy, he is a genie_ , Kili said to himself. _He’s hardly more than a dog_.   
But then, he thought, is he really? All the little things he believed to have seen made him think that there was actually more inside him than just being his obedient servant. But what could he do about it?

He made himself some sandwiches for dinner and ate them standing in the kitchen, but as he came back into the living room to sit on the sofa again, he realised he could not resist.  
He called for him and he came, sat down beside him and they watched some more things. There was a film on, and as he watched, sitting beside the genie, he suddenly felt the urge to touch him to see if he felt as real as he looked. But as he reached out, Kili thought that he might object, although he would never say so. So he dropped his hand again, but Filean had seen it. He turned his head to look at Kili.

His eyes had changed again. The irises were actually blue, clearly distinguished from the pupil, but although there was still no white in his eyes, they looked more alive than before. Kili couldn’t resist any longer, and just touched his arm. It felt like solid flesh, nothing else, if a bit cool. Then, when Kili looked into his face again, he raised one eyebrow, but otherwise his face did not show any feelings.

“I’m sorry,” Kili blurted out, feeling suddenly nervous. “I just wanted to know if you feel as real as you look.”   
Filean didn’t move, but the eyebrow lowered itself again. “I have to go back,” he said after a moment, and feeling he had somehow crossed him, Kili only nodded.   
The genie disappeared, leaving Kili feel confused. He knew he had somehow hurt him, but didn’t know really how. But he firmly promised to himself never to touch him again.


	4. Chapter 4

During the next few weeks, they established some kind of routine. The genie would always tidy up and clean everything, make meals, and provide Kili with some company whenever he asked for it. Kili, on the other hand, tried to spend less and less time at home because, the more he used his services, the more his conscience worsened. 

It did not help that he could not talk to anyone about this. Not even Tauriel, his former-and-again best friend, knew that the genie in the lamp had not been a stress-triggered one time illusion but was, in fact, cleaning his kitchen every day. 

Another thing bothered Kili, as well. When he had seen him again, after that night he had touched him, his eyes had changed again. His irises had changed to a dark silver colour, and around them showed as much white as was in a human eye. The only thing that showed his eyes were not human was, indeed, the strange, silver colour.

Brooding alone in his bed one night Kili realised that he felt sorry for him, pitied him, and wondered if there was a way to free a genie from his lamp or bottle, to enable him to have his life. He was, actually, thinking of setting his genie free, a thing for that a load of people probably would have killed him. 

But he could never find anything mentioned in any books, he thought, and the only thing Kili could think of was asking Filean, a thing he felt reluctant to do. On the other hand, he told himself, if he did ask him, and he would say that there was no way, he could be comforted by the thought Kili cared enough about him to ask him. And maybe there really was a way. 

The next evening, as they sat in front of the television again (a thing that sounds like he’d done it enough times in the years before, but watching telly with a genie is something else than doing so with a bank clerk), Kili asked him for a whisky and had more eyes for the shimmering golden liquid than for the film. 

It was Friday, and he had two weeks of leave before him, being forced to take it by personnel because he could not carry all of it over into the next year. Had it been for his boss, he would have lost it. Kili had started thinking of looking for some other work, a thing that had scared him too much during the last years. By now, he was fed up enough.

Trying to dissolve these thoughts and worries, he asked for another whisky, and for another one. Yet it did not help to ease his frustration. After the fourth, Kili realised that his frustration had nothing to do with his job. His brain had by now loosened up enough with the help of alcohol that he was finally able to see that he was so frustrated because he had a handsome, friendly man beside him and could do nothing with him.

Kili downed his whisky. Couldn’t he? Could he? He ordered another drink, and another, and by that time, his head started swimming a little. His brain was by then not only loosened but softened, he gave in and just swayed a little more until he tilted and landed with his head on the genie’s shoulder.

The sheer bliss of leaning on someone, human or not, made him sigh and close his eyes, but Filean didn’t move, so Kili opened them again and lifted his head to find him staring down with unreadable expression on his face.  
Kili’s heart grew suddenly soft at that moment, looking at this handsome face and these strange and beautiful eyes made him realise at that moment that he wanted more of him than he probably would be able to give. But what made him say it out loud he did not know.

“Handsome lad,” he whispered, and broke his promise to himself then and there. He ran a hand through the thick, blonde hair and rested it on his cheek. “Why can’t you be my friend? Why can’t you be my man? I like you so much.” He did, and it was that moment that Kili realised he liked him so much. And probably, judging by his suddenly fluttering heart, he liked him more than was good for him. 

“I cannot love,” Filean whispered back, but he didn’t take Kili’s hand away, or remove himself from that situation.  
_He can’t_ , Kili thought, _he has no will_. But looking into his eyes, he saw something there, something he had never seen before. And at that moment Kili was sure he had a will, had had it all the time, and had only been forbidden to use it. Could he make him? He desperately wanted to.  
“What if I wish for it?” Kili asked, but he shook his head.  
“I am not human,” he said, but still in a whisper.  
But Kili couldn’t restrain himself back any longer at that point. He put his other hand on his other cheek and kissed him. 

It all happened in a trance, somehow, after this. A trance caused by feelings and far too much whiskey. They made love on the sofa then and there, and Filean carried Kili to bed afterwards and made love to him again before he pulled the covers over him and disappeared without another word. 

From that night on, Kili knew he had fallen in love with a genie.

He still cleaned his flat, he still made his meals. But otherwise, Kili did think of nothing more than being with him, never uttered any silly wish, as he might well have, like a car, a pair of shoes, that sort of thing. He occasionally asked for drinks.

But he never had to ask Filean to come to bed with him. He kissed him, and he came and made love to him in a way that left him gasping for breath and almost crying out for more.

Kili spend the two weeks of his leave in his flat; only once he went out with Tauriel who commented about his looks one night and that they had seriously improved. It was then that Kili realised that he had to think up a cover story. He was improving, just because someone finally made love to him again, but who that someone was could never come to light. So Kili told her about someone he had met at work and had fallen in love with, and she was ever so happy for him. He felt bad for lying to his friend, but what could he have told her?

That evening, as he was sitting there eating pasta in a nice Italian restaurant with his friend, Kili realised that being with his genie was forcing him into the same parallel existence as he had been in before, with Thorin, a thing he had never again wanted to happen.  
And it made him realise that he had employed a love slave. He might have the tiniest notion of a will, but whatever Kili wished for, he would do it. He didn’t really have a choice, because he was not human, and it had, in his state of mind, taken Kili more than two weeks to realise.

On his way home he silently cried, staring out of the window of the bus and trying keep his tears hidden from everyone else.  
It had to stop. He had fallen in love with his genie, but because of that Kili could no longer make him go to bed with him. He didn’t deserve that, and Kili suddenly hated himself for doing it. Still in tears he stumbled up the stairs and slammed the door shut behind him.

He was there instantly, looking slightly worried. During the last days, he had begun to show feelings on his face, and it was entirely Kili’s fault. He shouldn’t feel at all. It was probably too hard for him anyway. He broke into tears again.

“Kili,” Filean said, and his gentle voice made Kili avert his eyes. How could he have been so selfish and blind? How could he have used this poor creature like that? How could he have been so vile? “Kili, what has happened? What is wrong?”  
“You. Me. All. Everything is wrong,” he said between sobs. 

He slumped down on the sofa, and Filean sat down beside him, making Kili feel even more horrible because he wanted Filean to touch him and at the same time didn’t want him to. He tried to get himself under control and looked at his genie.

“Whatever happened in the last days, it was wrong. I am so terribly sorry, but I never should have used you so. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t love. You did it because I wanted you to, not because you wanted it, and that is wrong. Wrong.”  
Filean didn’t say a word, and Kili tried to calm down and make him see. “I think I have fallen in love with you. You are a kind and friendly soul, but you are under my control. I can only order you to do stuff. But what I really want is for you to do what you want. I want you to love me, but not as an order...”

He trailed off, losing his train of thoughts as he watched the genie stare at him. He did stare, he had never done so. His eyes wide open, Kili forced his mouth shut and shook his head. But he didn’t say a word, and what on earth could he have said, anyway?  
Wiping his face with his hands, Kili leaned back and stared at the ceiling for a while.  
Filean still hadn’t moved, still hadn’t said a word. Kili looked at him again, into his handsome face, and felt thick and heavy a lump in his throat. 

”Have you always been in that lamp?” He asked him, and Filean blinked.  
“I cannot remember being anywhere else,” he said, and it sounded very cautious to Kili. Hesitantly, almost uncomfortable.  
”Does that mean there is something to remember?” He asked, and Filean avoided his eyes.  
“I don’t know,” he said, sounding suddenly afraid. It was the first real emotion Kili had ever noticed in him, and he felt even worse for having triggered it.  
“Would you like to remember?” He asked, and he looked at him again and nodded. “I wish you would remember,” I said then, biting his lip as soon as he had spoken. 

Very slowly, the genie closed his eyes and then he started to tremble. Kili watched him with a sinking heart and burning eyes, and as Filean opened his eyes again, they were not silver any more. They were blue. Kili shuddered, but so did he. 

”My folly,” he whispered, and Kili blinked. “My folly,” he said again and looked at him. 

Kili had never seen such pain in a soul, such agony, and cursed himself for ever having brought the topic up, cursed himself for his foolishness, his feelings, and his lack of control, his naivety. What had he done to him?

“I remember,” Filean said, and shook his head. And the way he said it was sounded so painful that it made Kili think about the expression of blessed ignorance. Sometimes it might really be better not to know, and it seemed to be the case with him.

Filean looked at Kili again and shook his head. “I remember. I was human. I owned a genie, like you do now. My folly was my undoing, my curse. I wanted, and he gave. But I wanted too much. I wanted to be immortal. I told him to make me immortal, and he laughed. The next thing I know was that I was suddenly inside the lamp, and that was it. I remember... that he rubbed the lamp and laughed at me and thanked me for freeing him, for he had done the same stupid thing ages ago. And there I was, trapped instead of him, and he was free.”

He shuddered, and Kili felt cold and sick with horror. How could any human soul possibly fathom this horrible misery of a soul trapped in time, forced to serve, be a slave with no will? And worse, the memory of this will had been left to him; that was what Kili had seen all the time. He remembered only the one thing: To have had a will once. 

This realisation made Kili cry again. Watching him, sitting here on his sofa, a genie who had been trapped in a lamp for god knows how many centuries, made him realise that there is a kind of suffering no soul, mortal or not, should ever endure. But what could he, of all people, do about it? But the moment he thought about it he knew what to do. There was no other way.

“Filean,” he said, and saw him shudder. “Filean, if I could only free you. You were human once, is there no way this can be undone?”

He stared at Kili, but he did not speak. Confused about his silence Kili searched his eyes, and saw a burning pain there, together with a deep, hopeless desperation. He knew. Kili saw in his eyes that he knew what to do, but was unable to speak about it. But Kili on the other hand, thought he knew it anyway.

“I want you to be free,” Kili said, swallowing the tears. “I wish for you to be free. I wish you to be human again! I wish for you to love me!”

“Kili,” he whispered, and started trembling all over. Kili watched him with growing fear. He seemed to be in agony, physical pain seemed to clutch his whole body and he doubled over, screaming like a banshee. Then he fell to his knees, and Kili knelt down beside him, cold with fear and afraid to touch him. 

“Filean,” he whispered, horrified at his pain, and his head jerked up at the sound of his name. Tears were streaming down his face as he looked at Kili, but he could see he tried to smile. “Kili,” he croaked, and vanished.

Gone. 

Kili knelt there, staring at the empty air in front of him, his voice still in his ear. He was gone.

He don’t know how long he had knelt there, but at one point he must have gotten up, because he awoke the next morning in his bed, fully dressed, curled up, cold and absolutely cramped. He couldn’t remember how he had gotten there.

The memory of the night before came back to him the moment he opened his eyes. He went completely to pieces, clutching his pillow to his face and sobbing, crying his eyes out. Filean was gone. Gone forever, and nothing would ever bring him back.  
It took Kili hours to be able to get up, and when he came back from the bathroom his eyes fell on the mantelpiece, and the lamp that was sitting there, innocently and dusty as ever.

He took it with trembling hands, but it was only a lamp. It was not heavy any more, either. It weighed maybe a quarter of what it had done when he bought it. And what didn’t surprise him, as he tried to open it, was the fact that the lid did come off easily. He stared inside, but there was nothing.

“What did you expect?” He said to himself. “A couple of pillows and a carpet? A nice tiny armchair and a television?”

Whom was he fooling? Clutching the lamp to his chest he slumped to his knees and broke into tears, unable to control his feelings. He had fallen in love with a genie, and because of that, he had set him free. That was his only comfort. He was free from this horrible existence. As to where he was, Kili had no idea. Maybe he was dead, because he had no body any more. Maybe time had caught up with him. 

But Kili clearly remembered his eyes as he had looked at him in that last moment. He had looked relieved. Immensely relieved and happy. He was happy. Whatever had happened to him after he had vanished, it had come as a relief. But to know him dead was no relief to Kili, and he couldn’t stop crying for the rest of the day. 

Dinner was a bleak affair that night, it was, in fact, nonexistent (Kili had spent half an hour or so staring into the fridge and then closed the door again), and sleep eluded him that night, as well. He cried, a lot, but at one point, there no tears left in him to shed.

When Tauriel came to visit him a few days later, Kili told her that the man he had fallen in love with hadn’t wanted him after all, and she told him not to let it drag him down so much.  
And what else could he do? Life must go on. He drew what comfort he could from the fact that he, after all those years, had given Filean what he had wanted, what he had longed for all that time.  
As the weeks went by, Kili slowly recovered. Life went on, and with his final frustration, he decided to just quit his job at Campbell and looked for something else. 

It was a few weeks after this that he met with Tauriel again to tell her about his successful job interview, that he would stop working for Campbell in four weeks time.  
She listened as they walked, and congratulated him, and they had some nice cappuccinos in their favourite coffee bar on that, sharing a plate of chocolate-chip biscuits.

“You look much better now,” Tauriel said to him. “Did you finally get over that other guy?”  
_The lie of my life_ , Kili thought at that. For the rest of his life, he would have to hide and keep to himself what had truly happened these last few weeks, and not even Tauriel could he ever entrust with his true feelings. So he just shrugged. “More or less,” he said, to keep as close to the truth as possible.

“You know,” Tauriel said, “It’s about time. We got a new colleague last week, and I thought you might like him. His name’s Philip O’Reilly, and imagine, he’s from New Zealand!”  
Kili looked up from the screen of his phone he had busied himself with as not to expose too much of his feelings. Tauriel had been able to pronounce the word “New Zealand” as if it was on that part of maps where it said: Here be dragons.

“New Zealand,” Kili said, feeling not really enthralled. Not that he had anything against Kiwis, it was the concept of a man in general that wasn’t very appealing.  
“Oh, you might as well come along Friday night when the people in our department go for a pint, and have a look at him. He’s a handsome guy, Fili is, even with his pierced earlobes.”

The name stung like a needle in his heart. Or more accurately, like a knife in his belly. “You don’t like piercings?” Kili asked, trying to banish the memories of Filean’s piercings.  
“No,” Tauriel said, putting down her spoon. “Really, no. Not even if it’s only the earlobes. But apart from that, he’s a handsome guy, really. And he has a great sense of humour, dry as a fart and twice as nasty.”

Still staring busily at the screen of hi phone, Kili almost dropped it when it suddenly bleeped to announce an incoming text message. He automatically hit the button and suddenly, the world around him faded a little into the background as he read the message: “Hi Kili, great 2 see ya again! F.”

Kili blinked at the screen, willing any other meaning into this message than what he wanted it to mean, when Tauriel nudged hum.

“Speaking of the devil,” she whispered. “He’s just come in, he’s sat down by the table next to the door. See him?”

Kili had to only half turn his head, fiercely clutching his mobile to keep his hands from trembling, to look the direction Tauriel’s nod indicated.

The man sitting at the table next to the door just put his mobile down and reached for the menu. He had thick and shaggy, golden-blond hair and a beard of the same colour, complete with the strange, braided moustache. His earlobes were pierced with thick, silver rings. 

The moment Kili looked at him he looked up from the menu and caught him staring. The ugly big ring in his nose was gone, but otherwise, apart from a slight change in the colour of his eyes that now were a shining sapphire blue, he had not changed at all. 

He smiled at Kili, and winked.


	5. Chapter 5

Where on earth Filean, or Philip O’Reilly, or whoever he was, had gotten Kili’s mobile number from was anyone’s guess, but Kili couldn’t say he particularly cared. They exchanged a few meaningless texts that night, on the lines of “how are you, I’m fine” and so on, but primarily, they had to pretend that they didn’t know each other.

Even in his disturbed mind that night, as he had come home, Kili was still aware of that fact that they couldn’t possibly know each other. 

But since Tauriel herself had provided him with a way, he did, of course, come along with her the next Friday to have a pint with her and her colleagues, among them the new man, Phil O’Reilly, or Fili to his friends, from New Zealand.

Needless to say, Kili was as nervous as any teenage boy before his first date, and it did cost him all he had to face him and smile neutrally as they were introduced. Fili, in turn, seemed to find the whole scenario outright hilarious, for he bore a smile that could only be described as a constant smirk for the rest of the evening.  
He chatted with Kili hardly more than the others did, some meaningless small talk about work and such, but as Kili left them, they officially exchanged mobile numbers.

It was shortly after Kili had reached his flat that his phone rang. It was Fili’s voice at the other end.

”Kili, hey....” He hesitated, and Kili could just hold his breath for fear of breaking into tears. “Kili, I... damn it.” He chuckled and drew a breath. “Tomorrow is Saturday. Can I see you again?”  
“Love to,” Kili muttered, lacking any other words.  
“Great. Is six at your place okay?”  
“Sure.” He seemed to have forgotten how to make proper sentences.  
“Grand. See you then. Sleep well.”  
“Same to you, thanks.”  
”Bye, then.” Did he sound reluctant, or did Kili just imagine it?  
“Bye.”

It took Kili a couple of hours to fall asleep that night, and, understandably, he didn’t sleep very well. And what little sleep he found was filled by weird, disturbing dreams, mostly of Filean, and how he used to look at him. Fili had, as of yet, not reached his dreams.

Kili suspected that everyone had been in a similar situation once, that is, thinking how a single day can possibly have so many hours. He had busied myself as good as he could, shopping for a dinner, cleaning up, preparing the food and laying the table, but when he had finished all this, it was only three o’clock.

Trying to kill some time, he switched on the tellie on and slumped down on the sofa, fliping through the channels to look for something interesting. He stopped when he encountered the National Geographic magazine with a show about the Amazon rainforest.  
He couldn’t have sat there for more than half an hour when the doorbell rang. He jumped and then, with a racing heart, went and opened the door.

“Hi," Fili said, grinning deeply embarrassed. “I...”  
“Come in," Kili gave back, swallowing a lump in his throat.  
”Cheers.”

As he closed the door behind him Kili turned around to watch Fili take off his shoes. He noticed Kili watching him and straightened up with a wry grin.

“I.... I just couldn’t wait any more. I took the bus, but I was so early that I walked up and down the street for the last forty-five minutes...”  
Kili had to laugh, even if it was only from sheer nervousness. “It’s all right," he said. “I’ve been ready with everything for almost an hour now, as well.”  
He chuckled and shook his head, then he embraced Kili. “God, Kili. So great to see you again.”  
Feeling close to tears, Kili did not dare answer at once as he held onto him. “Same to you," he managed to say after a while, and Fili let go of Kili to look at him.

”God, I have so much to tell you," he said with a shy grin, and Kili gestured towards the living room. “Coffee?” He asked, and Fili nodded.  
“Great, thanks. For some reason, I didn’t sleep well last night.”

The way he said that, and the way he sheepishly grinned at Kili made him finally relax enough to laugh. Fili seemed as uncomfortable and nervous as he was. A small comfort, at least.

When Kili sat down on the sofa beside him with two mugs of coffee, he smiled and took his, his fingers brushing Kili’s. They both seemed embarrassed by the fact, and Kili realised that they were acting like nervous teenagers. But just as he was about to say something about it, he thought better of it. Fili had his own life, hadn’t he? It had been, after all, only Kili who had been in love with him, not the other way round. 

That thought made Kili feel a little sore inside, but he tried to keep it hidden.

Fili took a sip of his coffee. “Well, I really don’t know where to start...”

Kili leaned back and watched him, and then he shrugged and started telling him about his life. Where he went to school, what he had done, where he had played football. His first girlfriend, his realisation that he wasn’t into girls at all (a fact that made hopes rise in Kili that he immediately stomped down upon) his first binge-drinking night with his mates that had ended, as is so often the case, in disaster. He grinned a little lopsidedly and carried on. His coming out to his parents who had been unexpectedly supportive.

He had then, after finishing school, gone to university to study IT and left his homeland to see something of the world after his graduation, and then had finally ended up in the company where Tauriel worked.

Kili wanted to ask, wanted desperately to know. But he thought it best not to, and let him come to that in his own time. So he asked instead if he was up for dinner, and Fili grinned and admitted he was starving since he missed out on his lunch due to hovering outside Kili’s house.

They shared a laugh at that and, feeling somewhat relaxed, Kili went into the kitchen to finish the meal he had started preparing.  
Fili came along and gave him a hand, and when they sat down to eat, the wine had sufficiently breathed as well. 

During the meal, Kili told him a little bit about his not so very interesting life, but that led, naturally, only to the day where Tauriel had called him and they had gone to the fair where he had, oh twist of fate, bought the lamp that had changed his life, and Fili’s even more. Here, he broke off with a slightly strained grin and shrugged. “You know the rest, I suppose.”

Fili nodded slowly and with a weird smile, not looking at Kili but at his glass. The silence that engulfed them after Kili’s last words was heavy and uncomfortable, as if the both of them desperately wanted to say something but didn’t know what, or more precisely, how to phrase what was on their minds. 

“I’ve a present for you," Fili suddenly said, breaking the strange spell of silence.  
“Oh," Kili replied, and Fili winked and got up.  
He went to the wardrobe and reached for his coat from where he produced a wrapped bottle. “I remembered you drinking these, and I thought, well, maybe you still like it.”

He held out the bottle to Kili who carefully took it and unwrapped it. It was a bottle of his favourite Islay Single Malt, and he was absolutely delighted. 

”Glad you like it,” Fili said, smiling shyly.  
Kili steeled himself, now that he had some means of fortification, he could probably face whatever there was to come. “Fancy sharing it with me?”  
“What, the whole bottle?” Fili chuckled, and Kili grinned.  
“We start and see how far we get.”  
“Sounds great.”

They relocated into the living room and replaced coffee mugs with whiskey tumblers. As Kili poured, he realised that his hands were trembling, but also that Fili’s were, too. They toasted each other and fell silent for a while, savouring the water of life in their glasses.  
Silence grew yet again, but this time it was more comfortable, for whatever reason. They drank in silence, and when Kili offered him a second one, Fili nodded with a hesitant smile.

After half of the second glass, Kili tried to pull himself together and summon the courage to finally get it over with. 

“Fili,” he said, and Fili slowly looked up. “I must admit I’m dying of curiosity... what exactly do you remember?”  
Fili took another sip and let it roll on his tongue before looking at me again. “Everything”, he said in a voice that was much deeper than usual. “Everything,” he repeated and looked into his glass again.

“I remember everything, though some things are a little clouded by time. I remember being a little boy on the muddy streets of a city I do not know the name of. I remember being a pickpocket, I remember I faced having my hands chopped off more than one time, but I somehow always escaped after the first time with one hand still left to me. Then I broke into a rich man’s house, but his guards heard me, and all I could grab was a shiny and expensive looking lamp on the nightstand.”

He took another sip of his whiskey, obviously captured in the spell of memories. “I remember that lamp scared the shit out of me, the first time that demon appeared. But I snatched the opportunity, although I was almost too afraid, at first. As you were, I remember. As everyone, I suppose, would be.” Here he interrupted himself and flashed Kili a quick smile before his eyes lost their focus again.

“I remember, the first thing I wanted was a meal. And on it went... I can’t say I enjoy remembering me being such an idiot. And it ended, in a way, with me wanting to be immortal.” He paused. “And now I know, even.” He smiled, but it was a ghastly smile, bitter and incredibly sad. “I read, I read a lot of books. I guess there are not many IT nerds who could easily have a diploma in history and archaeology as well. I was eager to try and find out.”

He looked at Kili again, and he felt something cold creep down his spine. Fili’s voice was a little husky as he spoke. “I was born more than four thousand years ago,” he said, and Kili shuddered, unable to suppress a gasp. That was more than eerie. It was.... terrible. Looking at him, Kili found that this still was understated. No mortal soul was made to deal with such feelings.

“And...” he went on, his voice hoarse and close to breaking, “And at the same time, I was born thirty-two years ago in Auckland, went to school there and studied IT in Wellington. I did a tour abroad to Germany and France with a couple of friends when I was eighteen, and for a short time I had a boyfriend in London I had met in Hamburg. Two years ago, I was best man at my younger brother’s wedding.”

He shrugged and looked at me. “It seems enough to drive one insane. Strangely, though, it only makes me tired.” Then he slowly raised his left hand to look at it, turning it this way and that. “I must have been about ten when I lost my hand to the axe. And at the same age, my granny bought me a brand-new BMX bike.” He closed his eyes and shuddered.

“I tried to remember for more than four thousand years,” he whispered. “And now that I do, all I wish is that I could forget.”  
“Fili,” Kili whispered, desperately wanting to say something to comfort him. But what was there to say to such a fate? No words could offer any comfort. But then, Fili seemed to be strong, and determined as well. He shuddered again, but then he looked up and smiled.

“But then, I still have to be grateful. I escaped, and the ghastly spell of that lamp is finally broken.” He took the bottle and filled both their glasses again, and a quite generous measure, at that. 

Kili shook his head. “But still. Not thinking of you, of course, but the amount of good such a thing might have done... avoiding wars, maybe, or...”  
Fili interrupted him with a snort. “Kili, for god’s sake. It’s humans we’re talking about. No human, and I’d dare say not even you, could handle such power over a prolonged period of time without losing themselves to it. We can’t. We just simply can’t.”

Kili swallowed, but Fili was right, of course. Sadly so. So he just nodded and shrugged, and Fili smiled again. 

“But don’t feel bad,” he said. “Hey, you were the only person in all these years to have ever so much as thought of saying thanks.”  
“Humans,” Kili said, trying to sound more amused than he actually felt. But he seemingly didn’t succeed, for Fili tilted his head and looked closer at him.

“Kili, listen.” He leaned a little forward. “I know you possibly don’t think of you that way, but you’re the greatest, noblest and generous soul I’ve ever met. You were, in fact, the first master ever that did not, in the end, succumb to the power of the lamp, or the genie within.”  
“Noble?” Kili swallowed, feeling flattered and at the same time deeply uncomfortable. But Fili stared at him so intensely that he could neither avoid his eyes nor move, but then he could not hold his look much longer and lowered his eyes. 

“You set me free, in the end.” Fili’s voice was soft and low, but he seemed to restrain some very intense feelings, as well. He shook his head and looked at Kili again, his eyes brimming. “And I never had the chance to thank you yet.” His voice was suddenly thick and hoarse, but before Kili acould even move, he closed his eyes and let the tears flow.

“God, you can’t imagine how this feels. To be free, to be alive again. I owe you my life, Kili. I could have been forever grateful to you for the sheer fact that you were friendly to me and polite, but, things being as they are, I owe you my life. There is nothing I could...” he wiped his face and swallowed, he seemed to fight his tears with no success. 

Watching him, Kili had started crying as well, but made no effort whatsoever to restrain his own tears. It was just too much effort for nothing. 

Fili violently shook his head and went on. “Nothing, nothing I could ever do or say could...” He broke off again and drained his glass.  
Kili did the same, and stared at his hands afterwards that were clutching the empty tumbler like a lifeline. “Fili”, he said, his voice unsteady and thick with tears. “Don’t. I did what I had to. I couldn’t possibly have done something else. Please...don’t do this.”

“I...” Fili broke off again and looked at me. “Why? Kili, by god and what else there is, why?” He stared at Kili, the tears still moist on his handsome face, and Kili could only shrug.  
“I couldn’t. I had to. I didn’t want you to be my slave.”  
“But... you could have everything...” 

Where was he going at? But when Kili looked closer at him, he realised he seemed to wait for something. 

“I...” Kili found courage deserting him. He forced himself to speak again, but h had to force the words out one by one as if they stubbornly refused to go past his lips. “I did not want... I wanted a man, not a love-slave.”  
“I could have given you plenty of opportunities to meet men,” Fili replied, cautiously and slow.  
Kili wondered what he was getting at, but by now, he could only stick to honesty. “I wanted no one else, you know. It was you I wanted. But what I really wanted was...” He couldn’t go on, his courage seemed to have run out. 

But Fili did not help him, nor did he do anything but blink. There seemed to be nothing else for Kili than to finally go where he had to, make a leap of faith and see if there would be anything left for him on the other side.

“What I really wished was for you to want me,” he finally choked out and stared into his glass, forcing his fingers to clamp around it to keep them still. 

Fili was silent for a moment, then he slowly put down his glass onto the table. He might have shaken his head, and he might have sighed. Kili didn’t know for sure, but then Fili reached for Kili’s glass and gently pried it out of his fingers. He did nothing else, and finally, Kili could do nothing else but look up at him. 

He stared at Fili for a long while, and Fili returned that look. 

Carried by a wave of emotion and unable to resist the current, Kili gave in to his urge. He reached out, ran his hand through Fili’s hair and let it rest on his cheek. “Handsome lad,” he whispered, and Fili actually smiled.  
“You have fallen in love with a genie”, he said in a low voice that sounded slightly amused, and Kili could only nod. But as he braced myself for the _no-i’m-sorry-but_ , Fili smiled and took his other hand. “And so you gave away your wishes, and used the last three of them to set me free...”  
Kili held his breath, and after a couple of seconds, Fili continued, his voice even lower. “You wanted me to be free, to be human again. The only way ever to break the spell, and no one ever saw this... and if they had, they wouldn’t have done it. Only you used your power to free me and turn me back into a human.”

Kili’s hand was still resting on his cheek, his other hand lying between Fili’s who now shook his head and lifted his right hand to touch Kili’s cheek in turn. Kili felt like bursting, but was too afraid and petrified to move. 

“And the third, the last wish...” Fili swallowed, but then he smiled, it looked disbelieving, helpless, but absolutely irresistibly sweet. Kili nearly choked on the lump in his throat as he spoke again. “God, Kili, after all that you did for me, how on earth could I possibly not love you?”  
And then he kissed him. 

Kili couldn’t remember having ever felt such unbelievable relief and pleasure at once, it hit him like a fist in the chest that shoved him over the edge of a cliff.  
He fell as long as the kiss lasted, but when he landed, he did so safely, and into Fili’s arms. He held Kili to his heart as he sobbed, letting all the pressure and grief out that had built up during the last weeks. It took him a while to calm down, but when he actually did so, he realised Fili was chuckling.

Kili leaned back a little and looked at him, and Fili lifted his eyebrows and smiled. 

“I’m glad you have such a god taste in men,” he said, and Kili blinked in puzzlement. As he saw his confusion, Fili laughed and shook his head. “See, I do appear as the master sees me.”  
“What? Come again?”  
“I appear... appeared,” he broke off and chuckled. “Appeared, fuck it, appeared however the master saw me. I remember I had black skin once, and once I had horns and a tail.”  
“Horns?”  
Fili shrugged and nodded. “Well. Obviously, the sub-consciousness has a strong effect on how you expect a genie to look like. It was probably just as good that you had a sexual deficiency by that time you saw me the first time, otherwise, who knows what I’d ended up as.”  
“Uh...” Kili managed, not sure what Fili was expecting him to say or what he actually could say to this. “So it had been me to create that handsome appearance?” He said after a while. “Well, fancy that.”  
Fili laughed again and pulled him close. “Thank god,” he murmured into Kili's hair. “Thanks to fate and ever well-meaning entity out there that it was you.”

They kissed again, and Kili melted into his arms. Fuelled by desire, desperation and a significant amount of whiskey, he wanted only one thing now, and Fili seemed to feel the same. But as they kissed, and kissed some more, they cooled off a little, as weird as that sounds. So instead of ending up in bed, they ended up emptying the whisky bottle, and Fili took a taxi home.

Maybe, Kili thought the next morning (better, the next day, around noon-ish) as he stared into the bathroom mirror, it had been the best thing. After so much alcohol things have a tendency to go wrong in the bedroom, after all. And besides, he reminded himself, they only just met. Shaking his head with a grin, Kili stared at his reflection and started brushing his hair. To think of that he used to complain about how dull and flat his life had become, only a couple of months earlier!

He went and made himself a coffee, and as he sat down on the sofa to drink it, the phone rang. 

**x-x-x**

Needless to say, Tauriel was delighted when Fili and Kili made their relationship officially known a couple of weeks later. After a year, they moved in together, and occasionally, they had some tea. Tea, not coffee. 

Fili had bought some posh, expensive and rather good Earl Grey in a posh tin, and every now and then, he would brew them a cup of tea.  
In the teapot, naturally. They both had to admit, it was always good for a laugh between the two of them. But in between, it still sat on the mantelpiece.


End file.
